With the spectacular rise of personal computer and telecommunications technology, there has been an equally phenomenal development in the technology of human machine interfaces. Most notable among these has been the development of the graphical user interface (GUI), which allows the user to input data into a computer system simply by pointing and clicking with a pointing device such as a computer mouse. This has lead scientists and engineers engaged in the field of human machine interfaces to develop alternative technologies for pointing devices, for example, capacitive sensing devices such as touchpads and touch screens, which are ubiquitously present as input devices for laptop computers and mobile phones.
Thus, with the growth of capacitive sensing devices utilized as human machine interfaces, alternative methods of interacting with such capacitive sensing devices such as by means of a pen, a term of art for a stylus used to input information into a capacitive sensing device, have attracted continuing attention from the scientific and engineering community engaged in the field of human machine interfaces.
The drawings referred to in this description should not be understood as being drawn to scale unless specifically noted.